Oubliette
by squibblyquill
Summary: Jareth loves his games, but does he really care for Sarah? See from Sarah's perspective as he relegates her to an oubliette! Disclaimer: I don't own Labyrinth.
1. Chapter 1

"So you think what you do is right, that you are justified in this?"

Jareth stared unspeaking.

"What makes you think that toying with my mind is the way to win me? Why do you think it's your place to twist and spin me?"

Jareth had his own self-justifications but he didn't feel the need to share them with his quarry.

"What you're doing is wrong."

His eyes lit up in a hidden smirk.

"Jareth, please don't make me live like thi…"

He cut in, "You said yourself I have no power over you. Do as you like then, what more can you ask from me?"

"But, Jareth…it isn't true."

This he already knew. But he liked to hear her admissions.

"Are you saying, Sarah, that I do have power over you?"

Sarah halted.

"In what way, Sarah?" he pressed.

"Jareth…you have an unspeakable power over my heart. I beg you not to abuse it."

He raised an eyebrow, taunting her with his eyes.

"I warned you, Sarah, I can be cruel…" an orb appeared and flicked across his fingertips.

"I know. That's why I'm asking you."

"Asking me what?" he lingered on the last vowel, a dark purr in his throat.

"Don't do this, Jareth…"

"Too late, my pet. You should have considered your position much earlier…I'm not one to change my mind."

The orb rolled from forearm to forearm and made Sarah increasingly uneasy.

But it was too late.

"Oubliette," he pronounced with a clip.

And Sarah was in darkness.

In the darkness Sarah felt about at the grit and rock surrounding her. Inside she was hurt and angry. Addressing the abysmal void swallowing her vision, she spoke:

"I thought you were different. Yet how many times has life put me in a place just like this—maybe not in a fairy Labyrinth, but in darkness, isolation, despair…I've learned well to see through touch and walk without light. Still, I thought perhaps in your kingdom I would find a different welcome. I let you rule me because I believed in what you offered, trusted the hand that reached out for me…

I believed and would still like to believe that you care for me more than you do for your petty games. But when in the name of sport you abandon me to this pit of bewildering misery, I cannot help but think myself justified to protest.

If you want a queen, treat her like one. You put a queen in the dungeon? Because it's fun? Safe? Something in between…?

And if it is my formation, my refinement which you seek in these shameless shenanigans; know well that something delicate roughly handled will not profit but sooner break. If your hand is too harsh, how shall I benefit? When you prune a bush, do you cut it at its trunk?

I believed and would still like to believe it's not my downfall you pursue.

And if you want a queen then I can promise now I will always will to love you.

Must you drag me through the blackened pits of existence to try the mettle of my heart?

Can't you find a kinder method? Can't you spell a softer art?

With a thousand enchantments at your disposal, why take the most merciless elixir and pour it down my throat?

No no, I have nothing more to prove to you, dear Jareth. I have proved as much as I will ever prove. Now you must demonstrate to me that it is a queen you love and not this dastardly ploy!"


	2. Chapter 2

'Jareth, I believe in you

But not in your silly war games

The space of my heart is a sanctuary

Not a board of strategy

You want love, I do my best to provide

Don't expect me to leave you denied

Or manipulate you to make me satisfied

Faithfulness is not a web of lies

This isn't about putting you on the stand

All I've got is one heart two hands

Sometimes your cruelty is hard to withstand

Just treat me kind ok? Understand

I'm in this one with you, I'm your woman

Now the ball's in your crystal court

So I'll sign off and keep it short'

-Sarah speaking from her Oubliette


	3. Chapter 3

Jareth sat in his castle listening idly through his crystal to Sarah's vain pleas for peace. When, at last he sat up in his throne with a jolt. The tone in Sarah's voice had changed. He bent forward and listened avidly to the new turn in discourse.

"**Oh, Jareth. You must really want to see me angry…**

**You…are…sick.**

**And it **_**will**_** catch up to you.**

**Yet I am not your judge. **

**The injustice you willfully commit against me in your cowardice will be your jury and your shame.**

**To allow you to walk all over me is an insult to us both. And I will not stand for it.**"

Eyes set light like stones in her featureless expression couched carefully in the shadows of her prison. Something inside her lit the room aglow. And before Jareth knew it, Sarah had escaped from his clutches.

"_How…_" was all he could mutter in surprise.

Author's note: see you all on the flipside. Happy Holidays. I'll be back eventually. Reader's patience is appreciated. Nice little going away song: Coldplay's "Paradise"


	4. Chapter 4

_How_ was right. _How did Sarah escape?_ The thought consumed him. Burned, addled and irked to no end.

Jareth found himself kicking a few more chickens than usual these days, pacing with barely controlled fury over and across his perennially cluttered thrown room.

_Why is she not mine_?

With a flick of his wrist, he stared into a vacant crystal hoping her face would suddenly appear as it used to do. But no luck. Sarah had disappeared without a trace. And he had to get to the bottom of this farce. How dare she defy him like this!

_Oh, if I ever get you back my darling I'll return in kind the favor you've bestowed on me_. He grinned, anxious desperation veiled under dark anticipation.

Another voice cut across the monologue racing through his agitated mind. With it came a wave of stillness.

_Return in kind? What on earth were you doing putting me in that oubliette in the first place? You cannot know where to find me until you face the root of your own behavior toward me. If you can't look yourself in the mirror, no patience in the world can rescue your vengeful, frightened heart._

The sensation passed as quickly as it came. The words he thought he heard really afterthoughts generated in the wake of her fleeting presence. _Could it really have been her?_

But this he knew for certain. It could have been none other than his Sarah. No one felt like she did.


	5. Chapter 5

The king paced around the throne room with an idle air as was his custom. Outside a gaggle of goblins was attempting to put together a group of choristers. The grating sound wafting through the castle windows particularly irritated its king. And worse, he was bored.

Sarah had been gone for months-his favorite toy brutally robbed from him! He scoffed over the oblivious heads of his subjects at the thought. _I thought she promised to love me unconditionally!_

_**Loving you doesn't mean letting you walk all over me, my liege.**_

His breath caught, stifled in a slow hiss. It had been weeks since he'd felt her presence like that.

"Sprites and furies, where are you, Sarah?" he shouted before he could catch himself. Blinking he realized the fury and pock-marked heads were all turned in bewilderment to meet his suddenly irate spectacle.

"Well?" he nearly spat down at them, daring the little imps to stare a minute longer.

Sitting down under an unexpected wave of exhaustion he let his face rest buried in his gloved palm, leather decked fingers sprawling through his blond mess.


	6. Chapter 6

"Dear one, now don't misunderstand…"

He couldn't believe it. Was she standing now in his chambers after all these months? Had she truly returned to him? The bewildered monarch pressed his boots into the stone beneath him, preparing to rise. But something in her face stopped him. Leaning back into the tastelessly ornate chair snug against his equally extravagant desk, he wet his lips and waited. Waited for her eyes to tell him something he was afraid he already knew.

"Or maybe you don't want to know…"

He nodded almost imperceptibly, signaling with guarded trepidation that he was ready for her words.

"Did you ever wonder why you needed to torment me, lock me away and keep me at arm's length?"

His chest expanded in a sharp intake of breath, but his gaze remained level upon the figure in front of him.

"My love, what are chains except the means to protect you from yourself?"

Brow furrowed, the king mused with rising agitation at her unexpected words.

"And my love, why have men enslaved women for thousands of years if not in a futile attempt to shield and nurture their own sense of self-worth?"

His eyes hit the stones around her feet and trailed up her body. He did not want to see her face right now. A part of him was already angry for what she was saying.

"Are you ready for your answer?" she said again with marked deliberation.

He made no attempt to interrupt.

"It is your insecurity that put me in that Oubliette, your mute anger at the violence lodged in your soul which you fed to me in jest. Chains and slavery—what are they but the binds that keep you from yourself? Only, because you loved me, you placed the chains on me instead. Treated _me_ as the threat…And I could ask you now to let go of the chains you strangulate yourself with…"

For the first time he noticed her attire. She wore a white dress, torn but beautiful. Her hands and feet and neck all bore heavy iron clasps.

"But I know that is not the nature of the beast. Anyway, I wish I knew it helped you wearing these shackles as I do. Alas, love does not follow certainty."

An owl hooted past his window. His head ached. Lifting his reddened face from the disarray of his desk, he rubbed his forehead a minute in silent stupor. At once a flood of recollection passed through his middle. _A dream._

"Sarah…" was all he could let out from between his chapped lips.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Warning peeps, it's about to get uglier. Brace yourselves, and tell me if you saw it coming.**

Jareth had barely slept in over a week. Something tugged at the corner of his mind pounding out his waking hours. This at least, he could handle. It was only when he closed his eyes and started to drift off into the realm of the unconscious that nagging tug morphed into a gruesome force threatening to tear his sanity to bloody ribbons.

Something very dark lived inside of him these days. Festered by the hour. Even the goblins were on edge at this point. His usual scoffing had given way to unabashed fits of rage. And when the anger subsided from his exhausted form, it took all the strength he had not to simply curl into a quivering ball and hide his pained features beneath his gloves.

Somehow a part of him already knew it. _Sarah was not coming back_.

That same part of him also secretly knew why he couldn't sleep anymore. There was an image, a voice, a nightmare that returned to him at each and every opportunity. It was Sarah's form but not quite, undergone an unspeakable mutation. Sarah's voice, but faint and hoarse. The sound of it made him wake up screaming.

Of course no one asked him about the screams or the fits of rage or why his eyes betrayed a haggard decomposition. Yes, something was eating him from the inside. And no one dared breathe a word. Even his fae brethren and sisters in foreign kingdoms sensed the livid tension brewing in his castle and kept their distance.

He surmised his once iron will was all but spent. In fact, the thought that he might collapse at any instant did not faze him in the least. The inevitable rang loud and true now. But the melody still terrified beyond his capacity to hear its haunting requiem.

To all outside observation, the monster within his soul had at last gripped the corners of his lips, dulled his once ethereal locks, scattered wrinkles around his eyes and painted veins of red around his irises. The sight of him made even his subjects recoil in dumbfounded horror.

_**Jareth, enough. This is for you now. I am long past salvation. You know very well where I am**_.

The wrenching cramp in his gut made his heart pump near to bursting. At last he could deceive himself no longer.

_Sarah…oh, no…no, Sarah_…

Flicking a crystal down his wrist, blackness welled within him like bubbling bile. There was one place he hadn't checked yet, one place in the vast stretches of his sprawling labyrinth. Fear pounced upon every fiber of his being until he felt nothing, until there were no nerve endings left to stop him from doing what he knew he must. The most obvious of places, really…

Only the shifting light and a slight pulse marked the seamless transition from castle to musty shadows.

Mind soaring and dipping, giddy with unprocessed suffering, he clutched at the cold wall beside him.

As his boot met with mild resistance, he fought back the overwhelming urge to wretch. No light needed in this dank hideaway. He didn't want to see the remnants now sprawled in the darkness at his feet.

She had never left—no. That trick, that escape…well, that had never been a trick. She _had_ escaped, though. Escaped the moment her spirit left its long neglected body, while a part of her continued to live on in the echo of his memory, a silhouette of the soul. Yet the sweetness of her had lingered, had needled the hem of his conscience for months. Yes, he knew full well the nightmare in his dreams was Sarah. A dead Sarah, a rotting Sarah, a corpse of the woman he once knew.

Sarah was dead. And with the finality of her departure confirmed, something inside him died too.

**A/N: You see in a small moment of eureka I realized this was the most plausible explanation. And also the most compelling, though clearly tragic. Sorry, the happy end skipped this story. Better luck with the next one, eh?**


End file.
